Reality Check
by Kuzuryusensan9
Summary: He was still alive! Crawling on the bank on his stomach, hands weakly grasping handfuls of wet sand, trying desperately to push himself higher on the shore, Schuldig almost felt like crying.   The tower had collapsed on them! Who would have guessed?


Hello! For anyone interested this would be my first serious attempt at fanfiction. I've been a fan of Weiss Kreuz – Schuldig more precisely – since my years in college (cégep in Québec) and spent years reading and reading again the same 15 or so stories I loved most before deciding to try my hand at it. I want to mention though that English is not my first language and that many turn of phrase might seem odd to you. I also do not have a beta reader so there might be some mistakes. Do not hesitate to tell me if it's the case. This might be or not a oneshot depending on my motivation to continue and ideas for an actual plot. So enjoy and review!

He was still alive. He had made it out after all.

Crawling on the bank on his stomach, hands weakly grasping handfuls of wet sand, trying desperately to push himself higher on the shore, Schuldig almost felt like crying. He was cold, wet and bloody, his hair a red tangled mess falling before his eyes and his entire body was throbbing with pain.

The tower had collapsed on them! Who would have guessed?

For a second, Crawford's name sprang to his mind, but after a ragged sigh he dismissed it; blaming the precognitive would be an easy way out but he also knew how fickle the man's gift could sometimes be when it wanted to, that he wasn't omniscient like his enemies believed he was and that he could hardly be blamed for every thing that ever went wrong in their lives. It simply made the situation they ended in all the more anticlimactic.

He remembered everything with an acute clarity; Crawford cursing the bitch who shot his hand and ran out with Fujimiya's sister, Nagi's cold detachment as he slammed the young Takatori against one of the stone pillars, Farfarello bashing Hidaka's head into another column, Takatori's despair as he lunched himself at Farfarello to protect Hidaka, Fujimiya's usual promises of blood and death and of course the pressure of Kudo's wire against his own jugular. That he won't forget for a long time even without the reminder left by the scars that will beyond doubt brand the palm and fingers of both his hands where the metallic thread had dug deep gouges as he had tried to keep it away from his throat.

Lovely…

And then the tremors that shook the tower as the explosives Weiss placed in the lower levels went off. The way everybody froze for an instant before the struggles began anew, the debris falling from the crumbling ceiling and that terrible second when everything went out of control. The floor had disappeared from under their feet and they had fallen to their death. Or not. He only remembered parts and pieces of the fall. He remembered landing on the floor below before it also came crashing down and then he was tumbling through the wreckage, the wind hitting his face and making his clothes flap around his limbs. He knew he must have hit his head on the way down if his dizziness was any indication.

His current predicament soon erased his remembrance of the events of the day though.

His arms were shaking from the exertion and his legs refused to do more than jerk and twitch behind him. He dropped his head, resting his forehead against the back of his left hand simply trying to get enough air inside his lungs to stay conscious. His breathing was still erratic and shallow, a wheezing sound coming from deep inside his chest every time he tried to inhale.

Damn it… If the sounds he was making were any indication, he had swallowed enough water trying to get to the coast to half drown himself.

After one last quivering breath, Schuldig brought his head up and saw something that would make his day just a little worse. Blood. It was all over his hand and slowly trickling between his fingers, mixing with the grains of sand that were sticking to his skin and on the beach but there was no wound that he could see. Frowning, he slowly brought his other hand to his forehead, moving it carefully to his hairline before bringing it back down for inspection. He couldn't feel anything but his fingertips were indeed covered in blood.

He almost snarled. Head wounds were always the worse. Before he knew it, blood would be leaking into his eyes making everything just a little more frustrating. He blinked a few times trying to make sure it wasn't yet the case. One problem at a time please!

He couldn't stay there: the surf was still lapping at his feet and he couldn't tell if the tide was going up or down. He was still fighting for oxygen and couldn't risk fainting where he was.

He tried to bring his legs under him but failed miserably. They were still refusing to obey him in any way. 'At least you can still feel them', he tried to comfort himself. So he resumed his trek on his belly using his elbows to push himself forward. He was making excruciatingly slow progress and before long his trapezius, deltoid and pectoral muscles were burning from the accumulation of lactic acid in them. He clenched his teeth and kept going for a few more feet before collapsing with a grunt, spent and unable to catch another breath. He struggled a moment to inhale before letting out a weak, wet cough.

'Have to spit out the water… Before I drown myself in it…'

And so he tried. Every attempt more painful and nerve raking than the last but he didn't have the strength to manage to cough out more than a small amount of pinkish foam. The salt water was extremely abrasive for the capillaries in his lungs and the small blood vessels easily burst so it was no real surprise when he saw the blood tainting the froth. But it didn't make his situation any better. He was getting light headed fast and he could feel his entire body shaking like a leaf. He was getting into shock and there was nothing he could do aside making deep gurgling noises as he choked on the water in his lungs.

Where the hell where the others when you needed them? He was pretty sure Crawford and Nagi had fared well in their respective battle and aside from a wounded hand on their leader's side they shouldn't have suffered from much injury. Nagi was a telekinetic after all; he should have been able to break his fall or at least erect a shield around him as he fell to protect himself. Crawford, he knew, had to be alive or he'd never forgive him. Hell! This plan had been his damn idea so if he hadn't been able to prepare a backup plan for his own survival well he didn't deserve to be alive now! Deep down he knew he was exaggerating but panic was making its way into his mind and every reason was good to get angry instead.

Farfarello, he wasn't so sure about though. He had seen him out the corner of his eye on the receiving end of a vicious uppercut from Hidaka. In itself the punch shouldn't have been dangerous, but armed with those bugnucks, the kitten might have been able to dissect Farf's brain by aiming under his jaw. If the punch hadn't been deadly then the fall probably had been. Without any working nerve endings, Farfarello did not know pain and thus lacked the self-preservation instinct he would have needed to try to break out his fall or even put his arms around his damn head!

Schuldig's quivers were slowly receding. He knew his body was starting to shut down and as the thought finally processed in his mind so did the fact that his face was laying on the sand and that his eyes had closed. Breathing was almost impossible now and he couldn't find the energy anymore – even in misplaced anger or worry for his teammates – to lift his body from the ground and much less clean his lungs of the water clogging them. All he could manage was opening slightly his eyes; at least the one that wasn't half buried in grit and what he saw surprised him enough to render him speechless – not that he could have had spoken had he wanted to – and had him blinking hard to make sure that he wasn't hallucinating: through heavy strands of salt stiff red hair, he could make out a pair of feet only a few paces away from his face. Standing naked feet! From their size and their shape he knew they had to belong to a man and not a woman but they were attached to a pair of legs clad in dark trousers which meant that they couldn't belong to any of his teammates as they were all dressed in white. They couldn't belong to any of his teammates but he still couldn't tell who they where from… 'Why can't I tell? Why can't I read him?'

Then he stopped to think about it and he realised that not only couldn't he hear his teammates' minds but he couldn't hear anybody else's either. No Weiss, no survivor from Estet, no one coming from the road, no passerby, no ambulance driver, no medic, no nothing and more importantly no stranger right in front of him. He felt basically like a dead mind. With the world crashing around him and his breathing problems he had not even realised that all he could hear aside from the waves, the gulls, his own heart beating and his erratic intakes of air was silence! 'Shit… I must have hit my head harder than I thought if my gift crawled away somewhere in the back of my brain. It's the shock… Has to be the shock…'

Time slowed down and he felt like an eternity came and went. Darkness was crawling around the edges of his vision now and all he could see anymore in his tunnelling vision was that soaked dark material in front of his face.

Then suddenly he wasn't lying down on his belly anymore but on his back and his face wasn't facing a pair of feet but the sky now. His mind was slow to process the event. He wasn't breathing anymore, his lungs were burning so painfully tears were condensing around his eyelashes, black spots were dancing in front of his eyes and the darkness around his peripheral vision was gaining ground. All he could think anymore was:

'So this is how I'm gonna die… Scheiβ…'

And as his eyes closed by themselves, the sky disappeared and was replaced by what he would later recall as the greenest eyes he had ever seen.


End file.
